The people have spoken — and they’ve made it abundantly clear that plant-based diets are here to stay, no matter where in the world you are. While the United States has seen a shift towards more people following plant-based diets, it’s clear that the trend is international — and doesn’t stop when people are in transit!

Live Kindly reported that Emirates Airlines has served more than 20,000 vegan meals while aboard their flights this month alone — which represents a 40 percent increase in people choosing a vegetarian/vegan option. The airline makes more than 200,000 meals daily — and in 2019, vegan dinners are now the third most popular request, per Time Out Dubai.

People love their pets and CES 2019 was packed with technology to prove it. We saw gadgets galore for cats and dogs, from self-cleaning toilets to remote cameras. Some are genius, some may be slightly mad, but all are designed especially for your furry friends.

We’re big fans of the original Pet Cube — a camera for checking up on your cat or dog while you’re out and about. Pet Cube 2 is smaller and features a refined design. You can see how your pet is doing by connecting remotely on your phone and you can talk to them and hear them thanks to the two way audio. The dog version also allows you to dispense treats, while the cat version has a built-in laser toy.

Owners of the newly released $350 Nike app-connected Adapt BB self-tying shoes have taken to the Google Play store to complain that an update left their fancy kicks bricked. That’s right, the self-lacing shoes reportedly no longer connect to the accompanying app — essentially transforming them into regular old shoes (buttons on the side of the shoes means you can still tie them). And people are pissed.

Here’s how, according to a press release, the shoes are supposed to work: An internal “advanced power-lacing system” combines with an “app and continually updated firmware” to tie and untie your footwear. The app lets you choose your perfect fit, and the shoe adjusts to your foot’s changing size as it theoretically swells throughout a basketball game. Again, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

Samsung may have just unveiled the most exciting new phone in years. Or, it may have unveiled a nearly $2,000 disappointment that just so happens to have a flexible display.

We don’t actually know, because the company barely let us see the phone that’s supposed to herald a new era of smartphone design. Samsung kicked off its Unpacked event by cutting to the chase: it officially revealed the Galaxy Fold, a fold-up phone that doubles as a tablet.

It’s an impressive feat of engineering, to be sure. And the brief demos we caught a glimpse of onstage were certainly more impressive than the clunky and dimly lit demo we saw back in November. Samsung execs showed off the phone’s folding and unfolding abilities, and demonstrated a couple apps: Spotify and Google Maps, as well as three-way multitasking.

But that’s pretty much all we saw. As quickly as it came out, the phone was slipped back into Samsung president DJ Koh’s pocket.

If you think the idea of getting a transfusion with “young blood” to ward off aging sounds far-fetched, well, U.S. health officials agree.

Today (Feb. 19), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it was concerned about reports of “bad actors” offering infusions of blood plasma from young people to purportedly treat age-related conditions and diseases, such a memory loss, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. Such treatments are not only unproven, but they also come with potentially serious risks, the agency said.

A lot of small businesses use Amazon Marketplace to sell products to a wide audience. Amazon directly sells some products to customers, but more than half of the products sold on the platform are from third-party sellers.

Selling on Amazon is easy, and many businesses rely on the platform for most of their sales. Sellers compete to get customers, rank high in search results and get the coveted “best seller” tag. However, sometimes the competition turns sour. Some sellers are sabotaging their competition to get ahead.

Have you ever had a friend that told you they lost weight by taking vitamins? I did! Let’s just say it didn’t workout for me as well as it did for him.

Everyone has been a culprit of trying a quick-fix solution to reverse years of bad habits, if only losing weight was as easy as popping some vitamin supplements in your mouth every morning. Unfortunately, it’s not.

However, don’t misunderstand. Vitamins can be useful in your journey towards losing weight, and that’s what we’re going to talk about.

Most Americans have a smaller total federal income tax bill for 2018 than they did in previous years, thanks to the tax law passed by Congress in 2017. But thanks to changing instructions from the IRS on how to withhold tax, many people will see smaller refunds or may even owe money when they file their tax returns.

So far, the average refund paid to taxpayers is down 8.7% to $1,949, from an average of $2,135 this time in filing season last year, according to the IRS.

In another sign that fast fashion is dying off, Payless ShoeSource Inc. says it plans to close all of its 2,100 stores in the United States and Puerto Rico. Two years ago, Payless declared bankruptcy during a wider wave of store closures throughout the country, something we’ve come to describe as the retail apocalypse. At the time, the company shuttered a number of its stores, which allowed it to eliminate hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, according to the Wall Street Journal. But none of this restructuring was able to save it from further collapse.